Merger By Matrimony

‘Stop it,’ she whispered. Tears were gathering in the corners of her eyes and she angrily blinked them away, coincidentally blinking away the vision of him in front of her, looking at her in that way, that way that suggested the impossible, even though she knew that he was still playing games with her.

‘No, I won’t. I can’t,’ he said huskily, so that now a desperate kind of hope was beginning to wage war with her grim acceptance. And, like a weed, the hope was sending out shoots everywhere.

‘What are you talking about?’ Destiny asked in a small, despairing voice.

‘I’m talking about you and me and why I trudged halfway across the world to get here. All for you. I don’t need your signature on anything aside from on a marriage licence.’

‘I told you…’

‘You’re not listening, my darling.’

It was the tenderness in his voice that did it. She looked at him fully in the face, willing him to say what she wanted to hear but bracing herself in case the words she craved veered off somewhere along the line, just as they had done the last time. She reminded herself viciously that this was but one moment in time, and if it proved a bad moment then it would be washed away eventually and become no more painful than a distant memory. He would go; she would stay; life would carry on the way it always did. Hadn’t it been carrying along for the past two months, ever since she had returned from England? She hadn’t died from a broken heart, had she?

‘I came here to tell you that…’ His words dried up and a faint flush began spreading along his neck. ‘That…when you ran out on me like that…’ He raked long fingers through his hair and told her that he could do with some water, which she refused to get.

‘I’m still very weak.’

‘Carry on with what you were saying.’

‘When you ran out on me like that…’ he continued, like a record that had become stuck in a groove.

‘Yes?’ She had every intention of pushing the needle a bit further.

‘I…it was like a punch in the stomach…’

‘Oh.’

He tilted her face to his and ran his finger along the side of her cheek. ‘No, I’m lying. It was much, much worse than that. It was like watching my life run away down a gutter because…I love you. That’s why I came here. To tell you that I love you.’

‘To tell me that you love me.’ The phrase tasted so delightfully delicious on her lips, did such soaring things to her heart, that she just wanted to repeat it over and over again. She laughed incredulously. ‘Because you love me. Because,’ she said, relishing the revelation, ‘you love me.’

‘And because, my darling, I want to marry you. I want to have you by my side and in my bed for the rest of my life. Because I want you to have my babies and be there with them, waiting for me at the end of a long day. To touch, to hold, to caress, to grow old with me, to laugh with me, to do everything under the sun with me.’

‘Penny for them.’

The deep voice interrupted her thoughts and she smiled to herself in the dark. ‘I was thinking about…everything.’ She rested her head against his shoulder. ‘About us, the wedding, and now this…’

She patted her stomach and felt a warm glow of contentment.

‘We’ll have to bring him back here, you know. Or her. To see where I lived for so long. He won’t be able to believe it when he’s running around the grounds of the house, that his mother ran around different grounds when she was young. And with Dad leaving I feel a little as if part of me is vanishing for ever.’

‘It’s not vanishing,’ Callum said softly. ‘It’s something that’s shaped you and will be with you for ever. It’s just given way to something else, a different way of life. And of course we’ll be back to Panama often, to see your father when he’s here.’

‘You mean, your fan?’ she teased. Far from disliking Callum, her father had warmed to him instantly, and the pride on his face at their small wedding still had the power to make her feel tearful.

‘One of my fans,’ he said airily. ‘The other one’s here next to me and number three will be on the scene in a matter of three months. What more could any man ask for?’

Or woman, for that matter, she thought lazily. Who could ask for any more perfection?

EPILOGUE

‘WELL, I think it’s time we decided to go for it. There’ll be one or two changes to your lifestyle… Could you cope…? Do you even want to cope? Am I presuming too much?’

‘How can you even think that you’re presuming too much? After all the things I’ve told you, you little fool. I can’t imagine any kind of life without you in it…’